Thought I would check in here as I haven't in a while. Congrats Pink, Slowmo and Fm (and anyone I am missing) on your full draft. I reckon I'm about a week away from that. I won't bore you with the details but I'm not really that happy with how it's gone. My thesis is way, way too long for my liking. I trust my supv (he has a great reputation) but every time I show him something his reaction is 'great, just expand'. It's not too long to submit as it's still under the word count, just about, but I think it reads like it's too long. Anyhow, on a positive note I am looking forward (if that's not a contradiction in terms) of revising, editing etc rather than writing from scratch.

Let us know when you get your viva date Dunni.

sorry Pam, no joy, I thought I had them but no :-(

they sound intriguing though, particularly the first one -1978 - were they not wearing maxi dresses back then???:p

Can't normally get medical articles but I have managed to get this one if you still need it. Pm your email address if you do:-)

From what I can see quite a lot of people register, post a single specific query and disappear off into the ether. They are quite entitled to of course, but a one off question most likely means that person doesn't feel any allegiance to the forum and its users.

Bad luck, comisserations. You are entitled to ask for feedback, as with for a job application. However, from my experiernce :-( it tends to be overly generic. 'Outstanding candidates...' is probably true but doesn't help you much. They might have scored it officially and if they give you a breakdown of how you scored, that could help. If I were you I would reply to the email, keep it brief, state that you are disappointed and if possible could you get some feedback at their convenience. Phrase it in such a way that you are looking for help with the next application. Always remember that even though you have been unsuccessful with this position, you could encounter some or all of these people later in your career. Academia is a relatively small world.

Good luck with your next applic (up)

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The club of 3 five starers becomes the club of 4! Congrats KB, well deserved :-)

It's difficult to advise as only you know why you're doing the PhD. Having said that if you have the possibility of a job which obviously doesn't require a PhD and the job appeals to you and you seem not too enamoured with your PhD perhaps the decision is looking at you???

All I can say is that I am nearly finished my write up (hope to submit this summer) but have found this write up period incredibly stressful and am literally (well nearly!) itching to get back to work. I know which I would chose if I were you but it's up to you. PhDs are tough, all the tougher if your heart is not totally in it.

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No no - you only the get the opportunity to collect stars when somebody votes YOU as a helpful user on THEIR thread. So on this thread only Batfink can see, and click 'helpful user' to your reply - which she did :-). However, this means she can never vote for you again :-(

@Batfink, I have magically risen to 4 - if only I could show this to my supv tomorrow; it might encourage him to okay the three thesis chapters he has had for four weeks but not returned nor commented on and spur him on to read the next three which he is getting next week. I'll give him efficient ;-)

:-x thank you for the vote [and star], Batfink, I presume - wot a great thread you created 8-)

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helpful user button only available when you create a thread, plus you can only vote for a user once!

btw, thank you Dafydd :-)

I'll contribute too as am feeling totally dopey lately and am in desperate need of something to counter this dopedity (sic). Quick, somebody ask me to find an article; I'm good at that if nothing else. My supv read one, just one, only one chapter of a colleague's thesis and said "wow, great, above the bar, first class" [you get the drift] whereas I am still waiting for him to tell me anything I write is okay. He did tell me I was efficient though :$

Wallowing in self-despair does not a PhD make:-(

Maybe a stupid question but here goes:

How explicit does anybody think your philosophical orientation can be, or needs to be when presenting your findings (qualitative in my case)? I would like to make direct links but don't want it to look clunky or forced.

Any thoughts much appreciated

Hi Corinne

Can't offer specific advice to you except to say that regulations at my uni have recently changed. Heretofore we had to submit a hardbound copy to the library but a digital copy was optional. I chose not to submit a digital copy of my research masters three years ago. However, this has recently changed. Now the digital copy is mandatory but we can chose to restrict access for the first year, pending possible publication of some or all of the thesis. Thereafter, we can still restrict access but on a year to year basis. Per our library this in line with other unis across the world. If you do intend publishing, your publisher would no doubt want some guarantee that a 'free' copy was not available elsewhere. In relation to this our library advised us that publishers were well aware of etheses repositories and they 'didn't forsee any problems'. Hmmmmmm, we shall see...

Great you're at this stage though :-)

Hi Fm

You're right, lots out there on online surveys but less on postal. A lot of the material on postal surveys seems pretty dated. I did a quick trawl and apart from the few lines in various method books I found 4 which may or may not help. All seem to speak about open ended questions in relation to postal surveys. I downloaded them so let me know if you can't access and I can send them to you. I haven't read them, only skimmed them!

Porter, M., Van Teijlingen, E., Livia Chi Ying Yip, Bhattacharya, S. (2007) Satisfaction with Cesarean Section:Qualitative Analysis of Open-Ended Questions in a Large Postal Survey. Birth, 34, (2), 148-154.

Niedomys, T., Malmberg, B. (2009) Do Open-ended Survey Questions on Migration Motives Create Coder Variability Problems? Population, Space and Place, 15, 79-87.

Krosnick, J. A. (1999) Survey Research. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 537-67.

Geer, J.G. (1988) What do open-ended questions measure? Public Opinion Q, 52, 365-71

They might be of 'some' use

A:-)